Maintain Your Body for Long Lasting Health & Mobility

Lesson 10 of 19

Kelly’s Rules To Increase Mobility

Maintain Your Body for Long Lasting Health & Mobility

Lesson 10 of 19

Kelly’s Rules To Increase Mobility

Lesson Info

Kelly’s Rules To Increase Mobility

What we're gonna talk about now, is as we delve in, okay we're getting a big schema about understanding, alright, I'm starting to understand my move more effectively. Now I have that system biology, remember we talked about the adaptation there, eating poorly, stress, causes adaptation down the stream, but now let's talk about some fixes so, nutritional that stuff aside, we can do a month about that stuff. I think that's coming on Creative Live, which is pretty exciting. In the meantime though, let's set a few ground rules, shall we, about what we're doing. And I call these the rules of mobility. And so the rules of mobility are pretty straight forward. And the first one is this. Rules for mob, always the same rules. One, bear with me, if it feels sketchy, what does that mean, it's sketchy! Your body actually gives you very clear comments about what is going on. If you feel like you're about to dislocate, what is happening? If you get hot burning nerve pain, what is that? Weird, hot bu...

rning nerve pain, right? If you feel like something is tearing, what is happening? We call this old knowledge of the body, and you guys can relate to this. Have you ever gone to Mexico, had some weird food, and you're afraid to pass gas? This is because the disaster pants will rear their head, right? You know that the key concept here is your body is giving you clear signals about what's happening. So the rule of thumb here is if you feel like it's hurting you, it's absolutely hurting. But Jill did a good description yesterday. That tissue dysfunction is there, usually when you get off it, it resolves. And so some people will describe, hey man this is really uncomfortable, like really uncomfortable. Ask yourself, am I hurting myself for doing damage? And if not, you know, keep going, obviously. But it is uncomfortable, and I want you to be comfortable with that, and a lot of times people have never ever experienced this discomfort and they feel like they're freaking out for the first time this must be a primary threat to the human survival, and it's not, get out, try it again, come back in. If you feel like inching yourself, reposition and try something else. Remember, we only advocate positions and mechanics that are safe, and only advocate positions and mechanics where we think that no one is ever going to do something too sketchy. So, feel sketchy, two, if you're working with someone else, I'll just throw this on here. If it feels creepy, it's creepy. And this is my advocacy of, one is, I really think you should mobilize yourself You should know how to fix yourself. And that ultimately, what I find, is that you know the ray, you know the vector, you know the corner were your tight, and where your all your dirty corners are than anyone else so if we can get you into those better shapes and better positions, and then you start to work on it, you're gonna be much more effective than anyone else. Now I'm a trained manual physical therapist, Australian trained, I am really good at putting your hips into good corners and finding these things, but what we know is that if you take a crack at it first, you're gonna do it, and you're gonna do it better. So this is my, more sort of my keyword for, hey be professional, right, if you're gonna work and help people solve these own problems, and more importantly, don't do something, like don't do weird hip groin thrusts in the middle of the gym, that's awkward, okay? It should look cool, trying to make mobility cool for the first time, again. Okay, last idea, is that we mobilize, mobilize in good positions. So what's nice about our schema is that because we understand what the safe position is of the joint, remember it has that rotation, then it becomes a very very easy matter to put myself into a good position. Through mobility we think we have what, about 1.4 million unique users. And what's happened is we have an impeccable safety record because what we're putting people in, are very very safe, best fit positions, we're never ever gonna put your hip in a very unstable position and load it, never gonna put the shoulder in an unstable position and load it. That doesn't make sense, we're gonna always bias the best position possible, and that's where we'll mobilize. Number four. And here's this big idea for number four, is that a lot of the shapes that we're gonna do, exaggerate reality, did you hear that yesterday with Carl Powely? That a lot of the training we do is an exaggeration of reality. So what we're gonna do, is we're gonna go up regulate reality. And what that means is that if you know what the shape is, then if I exaggerate the shape i need to change so, imagine that I'm running and my hip is going behind me, we talked about having this internal rotations of the hip is the finished position for running. What shape and position does this leg need to be in then, to fix a running position? Does that make sense? It needs to be in some shape and position that looks like this, or starts to look like this, or oh no wonder, and I start to build that context back in. Are you following me on this? So we'll give in to this, some basic ground rules for playing the game and let's talk about, let's tie some of these ideas together. So yesterday we talked about some movement principles. So some principle of movement. And we talked about kind of the one joint rule. We talked about spine first, remember all these, right? The rules of torque, okay. So we're starting to have some of these basic concepts and principles that allow me to understand and prioritize movement. Well all I need now is a little diagnostic tool. And what's great is that I have a diagnostic tool, those diagnostic tools are my movements, right? So when I'm looking at any good athlete moving, the first thing I assess is the set up. And what we'll find out is that when we have athletes who are take a second, or people who take a second, and be a little bit more organized, a little bit more integrated, before they move to pick their groceries up, okay, I squeeze my butt, belly tight, then I reach into the trunk. All I've done is made myself into a better set up position. So my start position is a little bit more finished. And what happens a lot is we get casual about some of the ways we initiate, and watch this, can I grab you for a second? Rifle was turned out just a little bit, I'm not gonna judge because it's early in the day. Now watch what happens if, go ahead and turn to the side, now if we watch his lower back, what I want you to do is don't load or do anything in a good way, but just kind of reach over into a dead lift position. And you see all the changes in his spinal mechanics? So one more time, come back up again, and do that same thing without loading up again, just without pre loading, just go ahead and bend over. And what happens is that I have a lot of motion in the back to initiate that, one more time. And if we put sensors on there, I'm just gonna block this, go ahead and do this again, brr, see how my hands went wider? And because all of this can change, and so what you see is that even though he looks like he's in a fundamental shape, because he didn't start organized, his body undergoes different tensions, different segments are tight, certainly these big powerful hips tie into the pelvis, you're gonna tie that down, he starts to get thick in the mid back again, so this little tug of war is going on in his mid back, so what ends up happening is that he loads up again, one more time, without standing up we see all of this change, and that change is loss of basic organization. Best fit position, stand back up, this time, he screws his feet into the ground a little bit, he squeezes his bum, and now ho ahead and set up, and do it again, and we see a lot less change in the back. And all we had to do was have him be conscious about his movement prior to doing that. So the first thing that I'm always assessing when I'm starting to run a diagnostic on myself, is thank you, am I set up, and am I moving correctly? And this works at the highest levels of sport, and even at the lowest level so when someone comes into me and says, hey man, I'm going downstairs, and my knee is killing me, can anyone relate to that? Knee pain going downstairs? The chat room is gonna blow up, yes that's me, hey I have to go down stairs sideways, holding the rail, well it turns out the first thing I do is I go and say, well can you show me how you go down stairs, let's fix the problem. So imagine if I just dropped down to knee forward, this is a retched position, isn't it? This is that knee forward loading we were talking about. How should I be going down the stairs, where should my knee be going? Out a little, oh shin is vertical, ankle is stable, hip is in a good position, doesn't that look like the beginning of my squat position? It does and if you go down the stair, you're not paying attention you're just drift that knee, am I even stable at the hip here? My ankle collapsed, and my kneecaps get cooked. And basically, a lot of the models that we're seeing, in this situation is that I have this very tough loaded system here, and then I just punch a vector right in the middle of that system. So imagine that my quad is loaded and then i just track, whoa boom, I get a ton of weird loading, and this is the mechanism for why so much of this knee problem is it. Or going up and down the stairs but first thing is, do you know how to go up and down the stairs correctly? Jump and land in that basic archetypal shape. In the example, I did a mobility wad, about going up and down stairs. Because running up and down stairs is the same thing as running up and down a hill, where my torse is upright, I better have that knee in a stable position, it doesn't necessarily track the toe, and it'll track into a stable position, and guess what happened? I got more emails from our service men and women stationed on ships who have to go up and down these vertical ladders and say, I dread the ladders because it kills my knees, and what ended up happening was there was a knee out, going up and down the stairs and they were like no problem, problem solved. And what happened to my mom? She's like hey thanks, my knees don't hurt anymore. Why did it take you so long to put that video up? So first piece is set up. And this seems intuitive, but also not intuitive. Second piece, I prioritize is this mid line, mid line stability which is our language for spine. Can I maintain an organized, this is organization, an organized and stabilized spine? And so if I see someone initiate a movement, one of the things that happens is if I see a break in the spine first, that's what I fix first, that's the issue. So if you're looking good, ugh! All set up good and the first thing that happens when you go to pick up your baby is that you round it a little bit, that's the thing we're gonna focus on first in terms of fixing the schema, that's spine first concept. Great, so this gives us a schema for addressing the movement but now we can get into what's going to go on underneath. And the first piece of this is that we work, and thinking on working up and downstream. In engineering terms, this is known as a forced function. You guys remember the forced function that Carl talked about yesterday? What was that forced function? Talked about blocking the movement. He forced you into a good position. Remember Carl was saying hey if we put the feet together, there's no other place to go. Well let's take that idea for a second. This blocked motion, how do we teach young gymnast children to jump and land, do you guys know? They jump and land with their feet together. Because guess what, there's no problems. So the coaches figured out that if I say you have to land with your feet together, kids didn't get hurt. Has anyone ever jumped out of an airplane with a parachute, and a backpack on? This is called airborne, how do they teach the airborne to jump and land, anyone know? Feet together, just like our five year old girl gymnast. I'm like congratulations elite fighting force now you're doing the same skill, what we figured out was once again, look at all these people working on the same set of problems, hey I notice if I have my soldiers jump out of an airplane with a 100 pound pack, and their feet are together, we see fewer knee injuries. The blocking happens, so the force function here is that I forced myself to think I'm having a knee problem, is there some contributing factor happening up stream, and is there some contributing factor happening downstream? What is upstream of your knee? Quads, that's weird, you didn't even have to know the technical term for legs, right, the quads. So can tight quads cause knee pains? Absolutely, one to one it's weird how the quads attach directly to the knee via the knee. What about the calf, can a tight calf cause knee pain? So what happens if I'm cruising around my cute high heel shoes all the time, are my calfs becoming adaptively short all the time in a shortened position absolutely they are. Can you imagine that that tightness as the gastrocnemius crosses the back of the knee, can absolutely be a generator of my knee pain. So look, you don't even have to have a PHD in your body awareness, you can just push like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, I mean it's like aw, push on that! Did that change something well it turns out it goes right upstream and downstream. There are complex biological phenomenon going on in your body. There's a woman named Janet Travelle, who wrote, Travelle and Simons I think wrote these two major big textbooks about trigger points. She was one of the presidential physicians, she's genius, talked about shorten sections of muscle tissue that are pain generators. So we're gonna get through today, we'll talk about those imagine I have this beautiful sheet of muscle and then I wind up a little knot there, and everything pulls around it, right? Well I can memorize the trigger point referral patterns for the body. Now there's an iPhone app for that, which is brilliant right, I can just, whoa. Or, if I'm having some symptoms here, I could remember potentially that this is actually connected to this, via this, and if I go downstream of the problem and push on it, often times I'm gonna do some exploration. And one of our models here, we'll talk about some program on this, is that I force myself to look around, did any of you guys realize that your diaphragm was also, your breathing mechanics were related to how your stomach felt yesterday? Well the stomach is right downstream the diaphragm. That makes good sense, right? How about the back muscles we were working on, for respiration, wasn't that upstream of the diaphragm? Ah so Jill forced you into this nice upstream downstream paradigm and if you don't have to memorize this, which is great because I don't want you to memorize a bunch of lists, I want you to be able to apply the set of principles, to be able to start taking a crack at your dysfunction. So if you're missing ankle range of motion, right what is right upstream of the ankle? The leg, the lower leg. In the front, can tightness in the front of the muscle here affect how my ankle works? You betcha, it's right upstream of it! It's a system of systems. Can tight tissues on the bottom of my foot affect how my ankle works? You bet, it's downstream and you don't even have to remember all the complex processes or phenomenon, you just have to remember that A is connected to B, and I go right upstream and downstream. And this is very enlightening and very freeing, because in physical therapy school, they would say things like well you need to clear the joint upstream and clear the joint downstream, and I was like of course, that makes, that doesn't make any sense until I realized, that when I squat, my hip is connected directly to my knee and I needed to have full range of motion in my hips, if i was going to have full capacity of my knees, and that's a simple idea. Are my tissues working to their fullest capacity upstream and downstream? Great quote, where the rats get in, is not where they chew, does that make sense? There was this great myofascial specialist named Ida Rolf, which you probably have heard of rolfing before, and she had a couple tenets, and these were basic. Remember she was a biochemist right. A doctor of biochemistry, and she said, hey, if somethings not in the right place, put it in the right place. Doesn't that seem reasonable? We'll talk about that, when we work on the joint capsules later on this afternoon. But she said if somethings not moving, figure out why it's not moving, get it moving, and how about this. She's like, where you think it is, it's not. And that's a very deep idea, because you're like it hurts here, so I'm gonna push here! Give me the icepick, it still doesn't fix it. Well it turns out, this may be the weak link in the system, your knee is putting up with your silly BS, related to the upstream and downstream concept so the knee port is caught in a tug war and finally it's like, I can't take it anymore. Do you think it's a failure of your kneecap, to have a hole worn in it? Or is it a failure of the quad tissues being so stiff, coupled with poor movement, that compresses my knee into my femur. Now we start to understand what it is. So if I'm having knee pain, and I happen to work upstream, I don't even have to be able to connect all the dots about what's happening, all I need to do is forcing myself into a reasonable way to work upstream and downstream of the problem, and this becomes a revolutionary tactic and you will start to make associations, that in physical therapy we call regional interdependencies. Right, but of course your ankle is related to how well you run so if your ankle is tight, what happens to your foot when it turns out? Oh, and now why you're having knee pain. So really this tight ankle forces a bad movement pattern, and now you're getting it. Remember our two systems was either, it was over tension, or over circuit faulting. And all I need to do is feed slack to the system. I used to live in a really old house in San Francisco. It was built in 1904, survived the earthquake, and it turns out that, some of these hinges were really stiff and old and there was a pile of hinge dust underneath the hinge. You've seen that in an old house. What do you think is going on in your knee when the knee is really stiff? Knee dust, that's a horrible idea, isn't it? The knee dust, the meniscus dust. That's where we wanna go, and here's our last concept here, is mobilize, mobilize or fix yourself, at the and you wait for it, position. The position of restriction. And what I want you to understand, is that the things we need to fix are the shapes of the movement. I want to tie this back into the most important thing, which is movement. So we start to give this context, and if you know what the shape is, can you adopt the full shapes, because imagine this, what if I just said you have to have full range of motion in your body, that's very reasonable, right? Don't you think you should not, you should be able to get your hands to your face? Very reasonable concept, right. And if you did that, maybe you wouldn't have elbow pain. Ah, there we go, and maybe I wouldn't have shoulder pain and wrist pain, ah, no wonder I need full capacities of my body so, mobilize to the position of restriction. Now, guess what, we're into the systems. And what's great about this now is you're starting to understand the big schema. So the first schema is motor control. What did we work on yesterday? Being in better brace positions. Am I more organized, do I know how to create stability? This is about movement. Okay, remember that demonstration we did with the ankle a long time ago? It was very very early yesterday morning, we got the skin sliding, we did, we called those sliding surfaces. Oh well I have a whole bunch of tools to work on sliding surfaces so we're gonna show you this afternoon, when we come back from break. We're gonna start to tear down and restore how the body is sliding over one another. So the next piece then we've been talking about is how to get the joint organized more effectively, correct? Well do you think that that bag of connective tissue around the joint, this joint capsule, could be stiff? You betcha, it turns out some of the research says that joint capsule stiffness can account for over 50% of the range of motion restriction. So, to your question about blood chemistry, do these things matter, absolutely. It's a systems approach, some things are gonna count more than other things. How many of you guys have been on a foam roller before? Oh just about everybody universally has? Did it cure you? Hmm, right so we make some errors. Are we doing it correctly, are we doing it vigorously enough, but maybe that wasn't the system that needed changing. Maybe the changing of the system was this movement piece, it wasn't just a sliding surface piece or I needed a different sliding surface stimulus, maybe it was my joint capsule. And finally I'm gonna talk about muscle dynamics a little bit, it's gonna be the first thing that we work on, this muscle dynamics. Yesterday we did a technique called, contract relax, and what we're really doing when I say muscle dynamics is that we're embodying what we've traditionally though of as stretching. We're embodying basically the language of saying hey, muscles are short, lets lengthen the muscle. Do you remember the demonstration with hamstrings? Remember how tight your hamstrings were, right? And then you got braced and what happened to your hamstrings? They got longer, so did I stretch him with my mind? No, so that didn't work, what we find is that by the time we usually do with better movement quality, plus, remember getting braced is part of that, plus getting unglued and untacked down, because some of you were breathing, we were just matted down warrior princesses, plus I adjusted a joint capsule and guess what? The muscle dynamic isn't a problem. And what I mean by that muscle dynamic stuff will hit first, is sort of how the muscle interrelates to itself. We're really talking about the contractual features of the muscle, and what we know is that it's a very complex phenomenon based on arousal and how much water I've had, and you know how stiff I am and is my tissue, and what we know for a fact is that, if I'm in this position, no wonder my pecs have gotten tight, but if I put myself into a better position, have I really stretched my pecs? Or have I really just put them back into their normal position? That's probably what I've done otherwise, I would stretch myself to a gold medal, don't you think? Yes, because stretching would obviously give me a bigger, stronger glute, but it doesn't work that way. So here's what we're gonna do, there's the set up, because now, we have a bunch of tools that we're gonna go over, that affect one of these systems, that we can test re test, and we're gonna put those test re test paradigms into some of the basic movements we talked about yesterday. Does it improve my push up, does it improve my squat? Can I get into a better basic burpee shape? What does that look like, and what we'll do is we'll test these things in some of these archetypes that Carl was talking about, into some of the fundamental shapes I was talking about, so you can experience that, that 10 minute squat test is the golden rule, we'll see if we can improve that. Kick it back to you guys, does this make sense to you guys? Very very very simple.
Lot's of nodding heads online, too. So it is almost time for our break, can we fit in a question or two?
Oh absolutely.
Okay, great. So a lot of people are asking, is there, including J bone and Brace Lewis, is there a good or bad time to do mobility? Before you warm up, after you warm up, as you warm up?
Hold that idea.
Okay.
I'm gonna teaser to the break, we're gonna talk about programming when we get back for five minutes. So when is this appropriate, right when we come back, great question.
Okay. And we have one more from Thompson World in Wisconsin. What's the difference between organizing, and stabilizing? You keep saying first thing is to organize and stabilize?
Stabilize it, don't criticize it. So the issue here, is we need, to put the body into a good position first, and then create that stiffness there. So what I'm really talking about is, is the body in a good shape? Am I organized here or unorganized? I'm unorganized, can I create higher stability or lower stability here? Lower stability, so the first thing to do is to try to put yourself into a good shape, then try to at least become stable on top of that. That's probably where were gonna have the best outcome, and that's a really good question, love that you are paying attention.

Class Description

This class offers an ultimate guide to resolving pain, preventing injury, and optimizing athletic performance. Mobility expert and SF Crossfit founder Kelly Starrett has taught tens of thousands of people, from elite athletes to weekend warriors, how to improve their movement and positioning to fix inefficiencies and avoid injuries. Kelly offers a healthy “how-to” blueprint for moving about in our hectic everyday lives. How do you fix your position while sitting at your desk at work for hours on end? How can you lift your kids without hurting your back? What’s the best way to run avoiding long-term injury? Kelly will give you all the tools you need to perfect your movement and ensure long-lasting health and mobility, unlocking reservoirs of athletic capacity you didn’t even know you had.

a Creativelive Student

Excellent working manual for the body, taught in a clear manner with plenty of hands on exercises. You will feel better after taking this course. I'd like to suggest that a "recommended equipment" pack/list be set up, as that would let people get the most benefit out of it from the first time they see it. Great work, I'd like to see more.

a Creativelive Student

Excellent working manual for the body, taught in a clear manner with plenty of hands on exercises. You will feel better after taking this course. I'd like to suggest that a "recommended equipment" pack/list be set up, as that would let people get the most benefit out of it from the first time they see it. Great work, I'd like to see more.

a Creativelive Student

Really amazing collection of thinkers - Jill Miller was the bait for me to tune in, but I found each presenter offering a wealth of logical, well organized information that is relevant for my own body, the yoga students I teach, the clients I have that come to physical therapy, and for the evolution of how we think about health and optimal living potential. Thanks for bringing each presenter to me!